Gain Business Support for Your Zero Trust Initiative

Written by Alex Sharpe and Jason Garbis of the CSA Zero Trust Working Group.

Zero Trust is a major industry trend that is being adopted and promoted by security teams within many organizations around the globe, and for good reason. Zero Trust mitigates cyber risk, allowing the business to create new revenue streams, penetrate new markets, and offer new products. Zero Trust can also be used to reduce compliance costs, promote resilience, and recover from incidents faster. Unfortunately, Zero Trust has also become an industry buzzword that can be confusing and is often misunderstood.

Business leaders and non-security professionals can be key stakeholders, budget holders, and gatekeepers in an organization’s journey to Zero Trust. These stakeholders can make the difference between successful and failed Zero Trust initiatives. Adopting Zero Trust as an organizational strategy fundamentally requires change, support, and investment of significant time, effort, and money across the enterprise. Therefore, security teams need to be able to communicate the value of Zero Trust to non-technical and non-security audiences, all the way up to the Board of Directors.

We believe that the Information Security industry has not sufficiently enabled security practitioners to clearly, succinctly, and directly communicate the business value a Zero Trust strategy can bring. The Zero Trust Working Group has recently released a research paper with the goal of filling that gap.

Communicating the Business Value of Zero Trust helps security professionals get a Zero Trust initiative approved, keep it going, and ensure success. This publication explicitly addresses fourteen different scenarios and why they matter to the business, how Zero Trust helps, and who they matter to. The scenarios include:

• Cost Reduction and Optimization
• Operational Resilience
• Business Agility
• Facilitating Compliance
• Preserving Reputation and Brand Value
• IT Risk Reduction
• Secure Adoption of New Technology
• Accelerating Business Unit Integration (Merger & Acquisition)
• Better Leverage Existing Investments
• Improved Visibility & Analytics
• Improving User Experience
• Supporting Strategic Business Initiatives
• Reinventing Business Processes
• Business Value: Better Meet Prospective Customer Security Requirements

“Communicating the Business Value of Zero Trust” helps dispel the myths about Zero Trust while enabling security practitioners to clearly, succinctly, and directly communicate the business value a Zero Trust strategy can bring. You can download the publication for free here.

Kudos to everyone who contributed!

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Questions about Zero Trust Advancement Center research, training, newsletter, events, and other programs can be sent to [email protected].